Monday, 30 May 2011

Hell and Bach

Portland's man of Porcelain (Opera), Jeff Witscher, with a follow-up from Hell (Rene) for Type, The Terminal Symphony, that’s a quite different kettle of chips from that debut and its handy little bonus disc.

There he was quite the nu-Kosmische cowboy, riding a wild frontier of high pressure atmos and bubble'n'squeak, giving a refresh to what was turning into electronica’s latest over-chewed Flavour of the Month gum. But with a sonic template based more around experimental 90s electronica The Terminal Symphony slips sneakily into a completely different decade, with an obsessively rigorous compositional style and an electronic take on classical minimalism.

Following the debut there were a series of collabs, 7”s, cassettes, and splits, though none really prepared us fully for his latest flame. He takes classical minimalism's forms as a main springboard from which he forges his own Hell-ish re-contextualisation in which the digital and analogue synths and drum machines of Porcelain Opera are reframed in a different structures. Type reckons Witscher “has used his enviable background in noise, punk and synthesizer music to come up with something totally removed from the current scene, and absolutely singular.” Certainly he’s been around the block a few times, as anyone with more than a cursory lurk in the experimental cassette undergrowth would have seen, but it was clearly the recent analogue and Kosmische fetishism of OPN and Emeralds et al. that put Hell on wheels. The Terminal Symphony is definitely a leaner, punchier animal than more generic peers leaking incontinental drift and arpeggio overflow. It opens with a familiar grunt and grind that tugs and chugs through “Chamber Forte” before the dissolve into the album’s main theme, whence familiarity fades and a neo-symphonic voice (more like that of Marble Sky (see further down this post) emerges. This voice returns on the hauntingly elegiac closer, “Adagio For String Portrait.”

“JW: […] I was really inspired by North Star and Glassworks. I’m really into the idea of reinterpreting classic minimalism.

EVR: Have minimalist composers been a strong influence for you won work?

JW: Well, I’ve listened to them for quite a while but I suppose I’m just seeing something different in them now. I love Terry Riley, Roberto Cacciapaglia and Arvo Part. I’m a huge Cacciapaglia fan, I think Sei Note in Logica is flawless. You should check out Sonanze and The Anne Steel albums.”

This prompted an esoteric minimalist tangent - a Roberto Cacciapaglia chase turning out not to be of the wild goose kind:

In fact, much of Witscher’s output prior to going to Hell - as Marble Sky, Abelar Scout, Disfigure Mare, and such like - was towards the ethereal and ambient noise end of the spectrum, offering up hours of layered ambient and drone pieces. Marble Sky’s The Sad Return was a particular favourite from 2009 – it dripped with plangent slow-fi low-core symphonics, as on the wistful ambient-drone-tastic “Pulling Up Grass Under Blanket”

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